Re: [-empyre-] Do You Still Own Your Reality?

[Henry Warwick <henry.warwick@sbcglobal.net>]

I detest "top posting" but in this case, I'll make an exception, as I feel
it will make sense...

The Voices in my Head tell me that on 10/7/04 3:23 PM, James Barrett at
jim.barrett@humlab.umu.se wrote:

> Go Jeff...I was wondering myself with an apparent 54 national elections
> taking place around the world in 2004 (including next Saturday in my
> homeland Australia) do we really need yet more opinions (be they satiric
> or otherwise) on the United States' struggle to return to its democratic
> roots (which I believe have not received moisture in a long time but I
> think many of us are aware of that).
> We need to create not mutate....
> Jim

OK. this just gets me mad, so rather than rant, I'll be as methodical as
possible.

Before I digress, some disclosure:

I should let you know that I will be voting for Mr Kerry, for reasons that
will become clearer later. I hope. I just had a couple of Black Russians and
decided to wander the infobahn for a few before I crash.

So, (at 215 lbs) I'm far from hammered, but I'm feeling...ummm... OK. Why
such indulgence?

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/1703846.php

is why.


Now: down to business...

> the United States' struggle to return to its democratic
> roots (which I believe have not received moisture in a long time but I
> think many of us are aware of that).

WHAT on Bog's little green planet of clocks makes you think that this
country was ever really interested in democracy? Return to WHAT? The
original republic? Sure, and in 1776 the political franchise only mattered
if you were white and male. Is that the democracy you're thinking that is
worthy of return? By the time women were permitted to vote in 1920, the USA
was already well on its way to Global Empire...

Simple fact: The USA has ALWAYS been an expansionist, imperialist power.
When it first started, it had already slaughtered many thousands of native
americans, and had material designs on lands west and south of its borders.
The mythology of "democratic roots" as something we can return to is purely
illusory. Never existed.

The USA is a de facto global Empire, a left over from the duopoly of the
cold war's fatal marriage / pissing contest. The American Empire had more
money and access to credit resources than the Soviet Empire and was able to
leverage its income in such a way that the Soviet system of Statist
Capitalism couldn't compete.

In the meantime, China has returned to the world stage: a totalitarian
capitalist disaster growing by leaps and bounds, while the American Empire
teeters at the brink. This has the Chinese very nervous. A detailed
discussion of this is here:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/pills2/

The American Empire is divided: there are the neoliberals who desire for it
to become Oceania sans Big Brother, and the neoconservatives who see the
fall of the Soviet Union as a green light for planetary domination. Kerry,
the neoliberal, Bush the neocon. Both are evil, but Kerry is decidedly less
so, as he and his ilk are trying to steer the USA into the position of
Oceania by way of NAFTA, only without the trappings of a police state.

Kerry sees the Eurasian Model of the EU. The EU is different as it is an
"opt in" model, where a country must qualify to join. NAFTA is more top
down: ruling elites sign an agreement and the body politic must follow.
EastAsia, aka China, is another thing altogether, and the link above
explains their situation far better than I can.

My intuition tells me that part of what al Qaeda is about is that it is a
feeble and misguided at an Islamic superstate to compete with Eurasia and
East Asia. The pawn in all this is the Indian Subcontinent.

I dislike geo-politics, this endless chess game of elites - it tends to lead
to the kind of conclusions that Pareto indicated with his theory of cycling
elites. Unfortunately, history has borne his theory out, but I don't see it
as a reason for embracing fascism (as he did), as much as it is a call to
continuous resistance.

Where there's a will, there's a won't.

The problem is, with this particular election, if Bush gets elected, there
may not be an election of 2008, and if there is and a democrat wins, the
country will have been so deeply bankrupted and so much of its wealth
offshored, that it will be simply left to shrivel and collapse, resulting in
something very much like a civil war by 2012. Or: like another nation
saddled with impossible debt, the USA could inflate its way out of debt by
destroying its currency. This could easily happen - the first thing would be
for OPEC to shift its measure of oil wealth to petroEuros from petroDollars.
After that everything else would quickly drop in line.

This threat to the USA some see as one of the reasons for the Iraq War. Here
is a very detailed examination of this theory:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/contents.htm

I see the EU as too wobbly at present to be able to mount a credible threat
to American Global Dominance, and besides, it's beside the point.

The point is this: we live in a world where corporate (or in China,
Statist/Corporate) elites dominate society. Some societies are more
democratic and fair to their people (say, Sweden or Denmark or Holland) and
some places less so (North Korea, Egypt, China, etc.) and most places lie
somewhere in between. The fact is that these smaller entities are compelled
to operate as larger entities (NAFTA, EU, ASEAN, etc.) in a global stage,
and this is pushing them headlong into Orwellian superstates.

This isn't *necessarily* bad: if the superstates are able to care for their
people better than the former constituent states are, then the transition to
superstates could be a good thing. But I'm not going to hold my breath to
find out, as this is *exactly* where the left is failing the most: as these
superstates are being organised by transnational elites, resistance to their
excesses must be brought to bear and be at the table when the pie gets cut.
Otherwise, the elites will simply leave none for the masses, and those who
resist will simply be destroyed by daisy cutters, or, more likely, thin
threads of support will be given: just enough to keep the body going: three
hots and a cot. 

The nation that slaughtered the Indians, the nation that invaded Canada,
Mexico, declared war on Spain for its Pacific possessions, aided the
europeans in the destruction of China, that has continuously undermined
governments that it finds the least bit troublesome, the nation that
instituted the barest minimum social security benefits to prevent a workers
revolution, that drops nuclear bombs on a prostrate enemy, that killed
almost 60,000 of its own people for a pointless war in Vietnam, that helped
Salvadore Allende to become the first democratically elected leader to shoot
himself in the back with a submachine gun from forty paces (pausing only
once to reload), this nation that broke countless international laws mining
the harbours of Managua, overturning the governments of Iran, Indonesia,
guatemala, and recently attempted such in Venezuela, this NATION where the
richest 400 families possess more wealth than 20 nations in Africa, HAS
NEVER BEEN democractic. Ever. So get over it.

Democracy in America is "a something to hope for". It is not "a root to
return to." The sooner we get over that little mythology, the better.

And THAT is why it is important to vote for Kerry. Not because he's such a
great guy, but because we need to move the nation to a point where the
Democratic party is seen as the Right Wing nightmare it is, and truly
progressive voices can get a place at the table when the political machinery
of Oceania is developed in the not so distant future. If left to the devices
of private interests, there will be no political development of Oceania, and
the entire nation will simply resolve into the backwater of itself.


>> How can artists "inform" during the political process? What are all of you
>> doing as part of your art practice? Just curious to know who all of you
>> are on this list.

Political art is problematic. At some point it ceases being art (a way to
address the sublime) and becomes propaganda (a way to convince people of an
idea).

My lousy website (that I am re-designing at present) is here:

http://www.kether.com

HW

I'm so wired right now, I need another black Russian... later...